Solitude

In this brilliant and highly acclaimed book, the eminent psychiatrist Dr Anthony Storr challenges the widely held view that success in personal relationships is the only key to happiness. He argues persuasively that we pay far too little attention to some of the other great satisfactions of life - work and creativity. In a series of skilful biographical sketches, among them Beethoven, Henry James, Goya, Kipling and Beatrix Potter, he demonstrates how many of the creative geniuses of our civilization have been solitary, by temperament or circumstance, and how the capacity to be alone is, even for those who are not creative, a sign of maturity.